As we told you earlier this month, Playfish has been hard at work developer EA Sports FIFA Superstars for Facebook. Well, the time has come for the game to launch, and we here at Frisky Mongoose jumped right in to bring you everything you need to know to get started.

Your first step in the game will be to name your team – for the sake of argument, I chose “The Mongooses.” You’ll run through a short tutorial showing you how to play the game. More so than other Facebook games, FIFA Superstars contains a LOT of information, and to the sports gaming novice, we can see it being a bit overwhelming. You can keep track of the strength of your Strikers, Midfielders and Defenders, along with keeping an eye on your team’s overall “talent” and “training.”

To actually play a game of soccer (or football, for our friends across the pond), you’ll first choose which league you wish to take part in. You can play games in various leagues, including the basic Superstars league matches, the Premier League, and of course, Friendly Matches against your friends that also play the game.

Once you click “Play,” the game takes over, showing you highlights from a completely automated game. You can watch these games play out, and are able to read the commentary across the bottom of the screen, as the game lets you know which player has the ball or makes a goal. These sequences last for a few minutes at a time, so if you’re in a hurry you can also simply hit the Skip button to move straight to the results screen.

Each match has three potential outcomes – win, lose or draw – and depending on the outcome, you’ll earn a different amount of experience points and coins (obviously, if you win, you earn more than if you lose). In order to earn even more money from matches, you can upgrade your stadium, adding items like bleachers, training dummies, training cones and the like, each of which comes with a stipulation that affects your bank account, your team’s training level, and so on.

In between games, you can also manage your team. Let’s say I wanted to add new members to the Mongooses – I could hire new players for my team from the game’s store. These new players come in packs, ranked in terms of bronze, silver or gold levels. For the bronze pack, I’d add five professional, bronze level players to the Mongooses for either 10,000 coins (you begin the game with more than that) or 8 Playfish Cash.

Each player comes with their own individual stats, including numbers for Control, Stamina, and Pace, along with either Shooting or Goaltending, depending on whether or not the player is a goalie. As you earn players with better stats, you can drag them onto your field to replace other players (keeping in mind the player’s position on the field), increasing your team’s rating.

Your team’s rating is the overall combination of talent and training points associated with the team. The higher it is, the more likely you’ll be able to overcome opponents, and vice versa. To help raise this number, even when you’re not playing the game, you can set Training missions into motion, which allow you to “force” your team to work on training in different activities like 3 on 3 practice games, shooting and passing drills or even simply stretching and running. These training missions have set time limits, and reward more training points the longer they last.

To keep the social aspect going, you can send mystery gifts to friends that could include match credits (you can only play a certain number of matches per day – additional match credits can also be purchased for Playfish Cash in the game’s store), new players or free coins. When you level up, you’ll also be able to post the news to your wall, which grants friends free coins.

If you’re a soccer junkie who has been waiting for a true sports game on Facebook, now is your chance to jump right in, and you can do so by heading over to the game’s page.